by Roy Adkins
When George III heard the news, he too was worried: ‘It is pleasing to find that Admiral Darby is so near returning home. His private letter rather has hurt me, as I fear by it that at some hour least expected that garrison may be vanquished. I had always trusted that want of supplies could alone make it fall into the hands of the enemy; now I fear that what we have done will not alone preserve it.’59 Gibraltar was now left to its own devices. The Spaniards continued their bombardment, and it appeared that thousands of Spanish infantry and cavalry troops camped nearby might easily overwhelm the garrison. Once again, the fate of Gibraltar was on a knife-edge.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DEVASTATION
The Spaniards maintained their relentless barrage, firing continuously all day and night from their artillery on land. Now that the fleet had gone, their gunboats and mortar boats also ventured in close to many parts of the Rock, often under cover of darkness. In the midst of this chaos, countless soldiers were still out of control, especially when they stumbled across more caches of alcohol and other concealed supplies, and so the harsh garrison orders for 26 April 1781 stipulated that ‘any soldier, convicted of being drunk or asleep upon his post, or found marauding, should be immediately executed’.1 Sleeping while on guard duty was always regarded as a serious military offence, because security was put in jeopardy, though up to now flogging was the usual punishment. In spite of these new orders, a few soldiers were prepared to run the risk of execution whenever they found an opportunity to loot.
The day after these orders were given, on the 27th, another convoy arrived. When Captain Curtis had notified Eliott that he was stuck at Port Mahon in the Brilliant, it was decided to use the opportunity to prepare a convoy in complete secrecy, rather than rely on the safe arrival of Darby’s fleet. Eliott risked sending the Enterprise and Fortune to Minorca, and they had slipped away unseen at the end of March, carrying many invalids and inhabitants who were given free passage.2 At Minorca, twenty storeships of supplies were ready and waiting. The few French frigates lurking near Port Mahon were no longer a worry, because when the convoy set sail for Gibraltar it was escorted by Curtis’s Brilliant, as well as the Enterprise, Fortune, Minorca and Porcupine.
When they reached Gibraltar, Ancell remarked that ‘Admiral Barcelo, no doubt, was desperately enraged at the arrival of this unexpected convoy.’ In fact, Barcelo had been replaced, which they discovered from the newspapers brought by this convoy. ‘The gunboats has been commanded by ... Moreno, of the rank of Major General,’ wrote Mrs Green; ‘this we heard by means of some Spanish Gazettes which came down from Minorca. NB Barcelo has been gone ever since the firing [started].’3 Suddenly, the garrison was awash with months of supplies, and Drinkwater was impressed by Eliott’s actions: ‘It now appeared that the Governor did not entirely depend on receiving succours from England, but thought it prudent to obtain supplies from other quarters ... Captain Curtis of the Brilliant frigate had the charge of this valuable convoy, and the success attending the enterprise demonstrates with what secrecy it had been conducted.’4
The cargoes from Darby’s convoy were still not all safely under cover, because so much also had to be rescued from buildings being destroyed in the town. ‘These heavy rains are particularly unfavorable to us at present,’ Horsbrugh said, ‘all our stores and provisions being exposed to the weather for want of proper storehouses out of the reach of the Enemy’s shot and shells, and they must unavoidably suffer from the wet.’ This Minorca convoy exacerbated the storage problems, compounded by days of stormy weather. Canvas sails from the scuttled colliers were used to protect many of the supplies, but Drinkwater felt sorry for the soldiers camping in the south, whose tents proved inadequate: ‘The rain that poured down in torrents from the face of the hill soon broke the loose banks of earth raised to cover their tents, which, being pitched on the declivity of the hill, were swept away by the force of the stream; and thus the fatigued soldier, who scarcely was one night out of three in bed, was frequently exposed at midnight to a deluge of rain.’5
In spite of the weather, the Spaniards maintained their bombardment, and on 29 April an unimaginably fierce and prolonged thunderstorm added to the havoc, which Mrs Upton endured, with no other shelter than her tent:
About eleven o’clock [at night] it began to thunder and lighten exceedingly; the flashes seemed to last several minutes, and the thunder was so uncommonly loud, that the like had never been heard since the great storm which happened thirty years ago [actually 1766]. The rain deluged through our tent, but I did not mind being wet. The glare of the lightening was so great, that my eyes were sensibly affected; and though accustomed to the thunder rattling amongst the rocks at Gibraltar, yet this by far exceeded all I ever heard ... I went to the door of the tent, but the whole hemisphere seemed on fire; and, as if we did not suffer enough from the Spaniards, Heaven’s artillery seemed in array against us! They were firing all the time, but we could scarcely hear their cannon, the thunder was so loud!6
One respite from the shelling was in the middle of each day, when the Spaniards strictly observed the siesta for two hours. ‘The cause of the cessation in the Enemy’s fire at noon,’ Drinkwater explained, ‘arose from a custom, pretty general in Spain, and common, I believe, in most warm climates, that of indulging themselves with a meridian nap. This luxury the Spaniards could not refuse themselves, even in war; and it was invariably attended to during all their future operations against Gibraltar.’7
Much of the town had been destroyed in just two weeks, and Ancell described the result: ‘The streets of the town are like a desert, and almost every house burnt, or torn with shot and shells. In some parts the shot and broken pieces of shells are so thick, that in walking your feet does not touch the ground.’8 Abraham Israel, until so recently a prosperous merchant, told his brother in London that he tried to salvage his belongings: ‘The town is already destroyed and burnt ... when it is possible to go into the town, I shall try to save what is not burnt’, but five days later: ‘I did not save you may reckon nothing out of my house.’9 He had lost everything. Drinkwater commented that ‘The buildings in town, at this time, exhibited a most dreadful picture of the effects of so animated a bombardment. Scarce a house, north of the Grand Parade, was tenantable; all of them were deserted. Some few, near South-port, continued to be inhabited by soldiers’ families; but in general the floors and roofs were destroyed, and the bare shell only was left standing.’10
Many of the shells fired into Gibraltar failed to explode and were discovered to contain ‘a vast quantity of sand mixed with the powder’, but other shells caused devastating fires in buildings, including the synagogue and Bedlam Barracks. When Lieutenant James Cuninghame of the 39th Regiment was trying to douse flames amongst some fascines on the wharf at Waterport, he received a head injury from a shell splinter. Price related what happened to him: ‘for several days after the accident, appearances were very favourable, and very sanguine, and hopes of his recovery formed, but some symptoms of a fracture afterwards appearing, he was trepanned, but did not survive the operation above two or three days. On examination the fracture extended from the crown of his head quite under his ear. He was not quite 19.’11
Fires spread rapidly in the ruined buildings, and so Eliott issued an order that ‘all inhabitants to remove timber and other combustible matter from their houses within 24 hours’.12 Much of the timber was used to build huts in the south, particularly at the rear of the naval hospital and South Barracks, and the encampment of huts and tents established by the inhabitants became known as Black Town or Hardy’s Town. Father Messa was living in a tent that became extremely crowded whenever the gunboats approached, so he was relieved when the convoy storeships returned to Minorca, because Eliott offered a free passage to any inhabitant. Others chose to go to England with the Enterprise at the end of May: ‘Many men and women with their sons and daughters, Roman Catholics, Protestants and Jews, took advantage of this opportunity and embarked
... leaving me as the one and only priest with the small flock that remained, which numbered six hundred, more or less.’13 A few weeks later, a list of names of Jews living in Hardy’s Town had to be submitted, 204 people in total. Even allowing for inhabitants scattered elsewhere across Gibraltar, it is clear that their numbers were greatly depleted, with perhaps fewer than a thousand Gibraltarians remaining.14
Boyd’s journal expressed bitterness towards those merchants who took refuge in the south of the promontory, describing them ‘as lost sheep obliged to browse upon the rocks under the shelter of huts, caves, cliffs and tents at a place the military call Cowards retreat, which lies out of the line of land-fire. But when the gun-boats appear, it is shocking to behold them, half naked running to creeks and corners to save their lives, such is the desolation of these unhappy inhabitants.’ By contrast, the courageous behaviour of Boyd himself was highlighted:
One general has another narrow escape from a shell, but his undaunted courage and wise conduct from long experience and trial, renders him bomb-proof from danger of shot or shells, for he wisely at the fall of a shell stands fast, whilst others shiver most strangely aghast, and as soon as the shell explodes, he, with his unalterable serenity in the midst of danger, holds up his hands as if going to catch the pieces, and cries look up! to see the pieces fall. Such is the magnanimity of General Boyd, besieged.15
These words were written half in jest, half with feeling, but he did act courageously throughout. One of the inhabitants, who would leave his native Gibraltar the following year, said that ‘General Boyd, the Lieutenant-Governor, is a brave and vigilant officer ... he has remained in a small casemate at his quarters in town ever since the bombardment.’ His headquarters, known as ‘number 10’, was hit by shells time and again. Eliott also continued to live at the Convent, and Drinkwater said that both had ‘parties constantly employed in repairing the damage. Both had bomb-proofs, and the former [Eliott] afterwards had a large tent, pitched on a rising situation south of the Red Sands, where, with his suite, he generally remained during the day, returning at night to town; but the Lieutenant Governor constantly resided in town, having accommodations in the Kings bastion.’16
As the plunder became scarce, it was recorded in Boyd’s journal that the soldiers resorted to other outrages: ‘Searching the Spanish Church they met with the effigy of the Virgin Mary with the child in her arms, which they took out, and carried to the foot of the Grand Parade, where they put her in the whirligig, a place of punishment for lewd women guilty of capital crimes; and there mocked the image by putting in provisions in place, and desiring her to breakfast thereon (such is the wickedness of many in this awful time of trial).’17 The whirligig was a wooden cage that could be turned on a pivot to punish inhabitants, particularly women, for minor offences. It stood in Whirligig Lane (now City Mill Lane), at one corner of the Grand Parade, and a description appeared in a diary from the previous siege of 1727:
A poor lady by name Chidley was ... formally conducted to a pretty whim or whirligig, in form of a bird-cage ... It contains room enough for one person, and though in length it be ten feet, yet it is not as broad as it is long. It is fixed between two swivels, so is turned round till it makes the person (if not used very gently) a little giddy and landsick. This office was performed by two of the private gentlemen of the garrison for the space of an hour in the market-place, being well attended.18
Half a century on, attitudes in Gibraltar would have changed little, and they were mirrored in Britain, where hangings and other brutal punishments attracted crowds of enthusiastic spectators. By ‘lewd women’, bad or ignorant may simply have been meant, or else prostitutes, especially if they combined their trade with theft and robbery. Wherever soldiers were present, prostitutes congregated. Naval ports like Portsmouth were a magnet, and Gibraltar would have been no exception, with many girls and women willing to sell their services. While the soldiers struggled to prevent their families from starving, it was not unknown for wives to resort to prostitution in exchange for food, though with prices for food and fuel rising sharply during the siege, soldiers would have had little spare money, and so most prostitutes may already have left Gibraltar. As for the effigy in the whirligig, Drinkwater said that Eliott ordered her to be moved to a safer place, ‘where, by the bye, she was by no means exempt from further insult and disgrace. If a bigoted Spaniard could have beheld this transaction, he probably would have thought the English worse than heretics; and would have concluded, that their impiety could not fail to attract the special vengeance of Heaven.’19
By mid-May, Mrs Upton and her children had moved into a small tent at Europa, further to the south, but found it no safer. ‘Every time the gun-boats came,’ she said, ‘I dragged my poor children out of bed, and stood leaning with them against a rock ... It would have melted the hardest heart to see the women and children run from the camp, without a rag to cover them, whenever the gun-boats approached. I was so harassed for want of rest, that I thought fatigue would kill me, if the Spaniards did not.’ Later that month, they suffered their worst night:
About one o’clock in the morning, our old disturbers the gun-boats began to fire upon us. I wrapped a blanket about myself and children, and ran to the side of a rock; but they directed their fire in a different manner from what they had ever done before. They had the temerity to advance so near, that the people in our ships could hear them say, Guarda Angloise!, which is, Take care, English! Mrs. Tourale [Taurel], a handsome and agreeable lady, was blown almost to atoms! Nothing was found of her but one arm. Her brother, who sat by her, and his clerk, both shared the same fate.20
Boyd’s journal lamented: ‘We have suffered more this morning than any one day since the bombardment began; 8 killed and a great many wounded ... legs, arms and pieces of broken bodies (none whole) of men, women and children are gathered up and interred in their Mother Earth. A dismal catastrophe to behold.’21 The three Jewish civilians mentioned by Mrs Upton were in a hut they had built in Black Town. One of them was Abraham Israel. Having first lost his fortune, he had now lost his life. His sister was Mrs Taurel, and the clerk was Abraham Benider, whose own father Jacob was in London.22 A splinter of the shell that killed them was kept and later put on display in Sir Ashton Lever’s museum in London.23 In their camp, the officers had large tents or marquees, and during the same attack Captain Price remarked that the ‘marquee belonging to Hamilton [Captain Henry Hamilton] shot through, his bureau broke to pieces together with some plate in the drawers. The shot entered a lumber tent we had near the marquee, and after damaging the bottom of a trunk belonging to him and another of mine, lodged in the bottom of a third. It was a 26-pounder.’24
The following day, one soldier was killed in circumstances that, Boyd’s journal stated, showed ‘death in all its ghastly forms, a cannonball shot him through the middle, dashed his privities against the wall, with part of his bowels; his legs thighs and hips laid dead before his eyes, yet the body retained life and sense for 20 minutes, during which time he begged for prayers, after which he entreated the bystanders to take the ball that lay by him and with it knock out his brains.’ He then mercifully died, but by chance his wife arrived on the scene moments later and ‘assists in gathering together the mashed remains of her husband for interment’. Yet it was often impossible to retrieve the remains of the dead, and for those who had a body or body parts that could be buried, Ancell deplored the lack of dignity: ‘Your body, which once was costly arrayed in fashionable attire, is denied the form of a Christian burial, rich and poor, without discrimination, are tumbled into a hole or ditch, a prey for worms and crawling insects.’25
This latest atrocity was the catalyst that forced Mrs Upton to embark on the hazardous journey to England. Her love for her two children had in the end outweighed that for her husband: ‘After what I had seen and suffered, I was of opinion it was not courage, but madness to stay. As a parent, I considered I had no right to expose the lives of my children.�
�26 She therefore requested permission to return to England by the next available ship and embarked on board the Hope ordnance storeship on 27 May, along with other exhausted civilians, such as the mother and sister of the clerk Abraham Benider, as well as nineteen invalids from various regiments who were unfit for service.27
With the ships about to leave for England, Eliott prepared various reports and dispatches, including a letter to Lord Amherst, his commander-in-chief in London, in which he admitted to the breakdown in law and order: ‘I must not conceal from you the scandalous irregularity of the British Regiments composing this Garrison, ever since the Enemy opened his batteries; except rapes and murders, there is no one crime but what they have been repeatedly guilty of, and that in the most daring manner: altho’ many have been tried and convicted before General Courts Martial.’28 He added: ‘I shall persevere with the assistance of the most active [officers] in my endeavours to restore military obedience. I have no reason to suspect that any care is wanting at the posts next the enemy. The Soldier is wakeful when the fumes of liquor are evaporated.’ Although other eyewitnesses used terms like debauchery and licentiousness, Eliott’s assurance that no rapes were committed may have been true, as most women had fled 2 miles to the south, away from the town where the soldiers were largely out of control. Even so, one soldier commented in sorrow: ‘It were to be wished, indeed, that a veil could for ever be thrown over the conduct of the troops at this period.’29 Eliott always held the German troops in high regard and told Amherst that they had given him no cause for complaint: ‘I must declare that the Hanoverians have committed no public outrage, and I believe but few private, having maintained apparent good order despite of the most dissolute examples.’30
Punishments continued to be severe, and because the ships did not sail straightaway, Eliott quickly wrote a further short note to Amherst about two soldiers who were sentenced to death: ‘I think it my duty to inform your Lordship that two of the British soldiers are this day found guilty of robbing the naval stores; they are condemned and will be executed tomorrow. I wish these examples may have any effect, but at this hour, there remains many for trial full as criminal in all appearance.’ The two condemned soldiers were from the artificer company and were duly hanged the next day, the 29th, outside the White Convent naval stores in Irish Town, which they had robbed, and Ancell said that the ‘town-guards, by order of the Governor, marched past while they were hanging’.31
